World's first lab-grown burger costs $300k

By Lianzi Fields| 7 years ago

Will the finished burger look or taste anything like this?

It seems that technology has taken over every aspect of our lives, including now the foods that we eat, with the announcement that a lab-grown burger will be served up for the first time later this year.

The burger, which cost 250,000 euros (approx. AUD $306,650) to make, will be cooked and served at a celebrity cook-off by none other than famed molecular gastronomist, Heston Blumenthal, reports The Guardian.

Dutch Scientists at the University of Maastricht have spent years developing the lab meat by growing bovine stem cells into thousands of thin strips of beef muscle, which will then be combined with lab-grown fatty tissue and minced.

Mark Post, research leader and physiologist at the University, said that it was the 250,000 euros donation from an anonymous source interested in investing in "life-transforming technologies" that allowed the project to go ahead.

The project could potentially help to save the environment and revolutionise age-old methods of meat production, which are energy and land-intensive and put enormous strain on the world’s agricultural resources.

Lab-grown meat “could reduce the energy expenditure by about 40 percent,” said Post, who is confident that his team can have the world’s first culture-dish burger served up by October this year.

Currently, livestock farming accounts for approximately 16 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions - according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, while cattle are responsible for consuming 80 percent of the world’s farmland.

Animal rights group, PETA, have also endorsed the project, as the stem cells can be safely removed in a way that does not kill or harm the animals.

So far the inch-length samples grown in the lab have been too small for tasting, and there is significant work to be done before the final product is realised. It could also be another 10 years or more before the meat is commercialised for public consumption.

But Post believes the research and expense of lab-grown meat is worth pursuing, especially with a fast-growing population, and with it an increased demand for meat world-wide.

"Everybody loves meat and meat consumption is going to double in the next 40 years,” said Post. “In my mind, meat consumption is here to stay, and if you want to do that at a higher efficiency than what is currently done by cows and pigs, you have to explore the possibility of doing that in the lab.”

Post also said that he would offer the buyer of the second-ever lab-grown burger “an extreme reduction in price”, estimating that piece of meat to be worth around 200,000 euros (approx $245,270).